In world diplomacy, both in the past and today, a lot of so-called alliances will use inspirational rhetoric about how all members of the alliance are equal, but it's clear that they really consist of one, or maybe two, nations dictating most of the terms. The rest of the members of the alliance are treated as colonies, or at best, junior partners whose influence over major policy decisions is far smaller would be appropriate to their population. But surely, there must be some international alliances that are not this exploitative, right? I got to wondering about what's the closest the world has come to the sort of idealized view of an alliance, where the member nations are about roughly equal in strength, the alliance lasts a fairly long time rather than just for one military campaign, and the alliance is close enough so that the nations generally consider themselves allies rather than just neutral toward each other, but the countries have not become so intertwined that the world sees them as a single country. This thread is for discussing real and fictional examples of alliances that came close to this idea, and for speculating on what other alliances like this could plausibly have developed in other timelines, and what the consequences for the world would be.
To make the conditions more precise, the group of 2 or more nations must meet all of the following conditions:
To make the conditions more precise, the group of 2 or more nations must meet all of the following conditions:
- If there are 2 countries, then neither country can make up more than 2/3 of the combined population or industrial output of the alliance (and by industrial output, I mean something like, how much stuff can the country produce in a year, measured based on some sort of labor theory of value) Note: if this is way too strict, then you can relax the rule to 3/4 or 4/5
- If there are 3 or more, then the country with the highest population must be no more than twice as populous as the country with the 2nd highest, and the same goes for industrial output.
- They must be independent enough that no well-informed, truthful scholar or diplomat from some other country would ever seriously argue that any of the countries in question is a mere province, colony, or puppet.
- They must have acknowledged one another. Groups of countries that are complete strangers to each other don't qualify even if they share a common enemy.
- They must never have gone to war with each other during the time they are allied. Not even proxy wars or under-the-table assassinations or anything like that.
- They must have cooperated in at least one war or joint military action.
- They have to meet all of these conditions for at least 30 consecutive years. The longer, the better.
